Levels of Reading
By Karmayogi
Reading a serious philosophical
BOOK certainly has different levels of appreciation. The Life Divine, Sri
Aurobindo's magnum opus, is NOT a book for reading in any sense of the
word. Now that He has written it as a book, of course, it is to be read. He
addresses the book to the European intellect. At that level, the book is
logical, reasonable, and intelligible. Many Westerners are able to read it with
appreciation, if not with commensurate comprehension. The mental energy the
pages demand is exhausted in the first few pages, then sleep overtakes. For
those who persevere, all the intellectual arguments are there, especially if
one is as painstaking as a translator to arrange the arguments. It is a feat
for us.
He who has successfully completed this course would see behind each
intellectual argument an insight opens, where logic mysteriously opens into an
experience. Whether it is an intellectual mental experience or an experience in
Silence, it is a gateway into the higher reaches of the Book. Having mastered
the Book intellectually, if one is patient enough to avail of each spiritual
experience that each argument offers, certainly he can congratulate himself on
the achievement. The partial mental world of ours will give way to a fuller
world, a world that informs us of its fullness. At the next stage, one is
ushered into a spiritual atmosphere that is more than that of Silence, perhaps
a world of creative Silence. Persisting there, one enters into the cosmic
consciousness, a realisation given to those who chant OMwith the right spiritual attitude, not mechanically.
At this stage, the reader will have completely crossed the first inversion of
life where he realises obstacles are opportunities and partially crossed the
second inversion of Pain is Ananda. The final stage of appreciation of the Book
is when the reading reveals the Golden Purusha Sri Aurobindo is, in His
supramental Form. Then he has glimpses of the MARVEL He speaks of – the world
of Delight Mother spoke of. From another line of thought, intellectuality is a
bar, Faith and Devotion are keys. To such people all the arguments come fully
through life analogies and the vision of His Supramental Form reveals even in
the beginning, if they are endowed with subtle vision. One argument of His
yields to concentration and consecration a flash of all these splendours at
once. It is a rare spiritual realisation to hold all the arguments of the Book
simultaneously in the head, if not in the Soul.